


like lovers do

by bi_magic



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: F/M, No Dialogue, this is kind of just my excuse to write beth feeling Things(tm) about benny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:28:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28898148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bi_magic/pseuds/bi_magic
Summary: benny's different. benny plays her like he's taking her to bed.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 22
Kudos: 94





	like lovers do

**Author's Note:**

> i cant believe i wrote another thing for them?? im just not over them honestly, i could write ten of these and it probably won't be enough. there's just so much chemistry that it hurts. anyway this is like,,,, i guess my version of how/why beth became attracted to benny in the first place through chess. idk its probs not that good but i Love them and if ur here u probably do too so i hope you like it!

benny plays her like a lover.

since the age of nine and up until him, beth's true lover had only ever been chess. it has never failed to rile her up, stimulate her, excite her; always makes her smile, cry, quiver. chess has, so far, been much more successful at awakening her emotions than any man. the men she's met, both away from and across the board, were always insufficient. the ones in her life were always pathetic, too awkward, too careless, too soft, and the ones she'd met through chess were always pathetic too, albeit in different ways: high and mighty, failing to see the beauty in her play, failing to appreciate her.

but benny's different. benny plays her like he's taking her to bed. and she feels like this time she might actually be able to enjoy it.

personally, beth's experiences in the bedroom have been less than satisfactory. at this point she's begun to think most of the conversation around sex was just a myth, that all you do is lie there and pretend to want it. but playing benny isn't like that. playing benny is the closest she's felt to what sex is supposed to be like, to her understanding. playing benny is like grazing teeth on a pulse point.

when he grabs the pieces on the board with sure, long fingers, something clenches in the pit of her stomach, heat pooling. it's a raw feeling, almost painful. morbidly, beth wants to be ripped apart by those fingers, held as tightly as the bishop in his hand. torn into. dug through and emptied. (she knows she would never actually let him do that. she dreams of it at night anyway, wakes up throbbing.)

when they're playing, he looks up at her every once in a while with those black-hole eyes of his: swallowing her whole, pulling her in. his eyes engulf her with their blinding darkness, make her breaths come harder. he's the first person she's ever met whose gaze feels like being touched. it's an itch, everywhere, all over her skin. (she makes a point not to scratch it.)

every move he makes is self assured, full of concentration and a kind of deep rooted anger that beth thinks she can understand - the world is never kind, even less so to the likes of them. it's lonely at the top, she knows, and he's been there alone for a long time before she climbed up to share the space. maybe that's the reason he looks at her the way he does.

he plays like a smug son of a bitch, in a way that makes her want to slap him, cover herself, gouge his eyes out with her nails. he plays like a teasing partner, lingering, intense, driving her wild. sometimes his eyes will betray a mischievous glint, just for a split of a second, and it feels like a part of him revealed, a piece he's willing to sacrifice to her. even surrounded by a crowd, it's secretive. intimate. utterly shattering.

any game against him feels like sex, but the speed chess they play in ohio even more than usual. he moves his knight, and a shiver passes through her at the ghost of rough hands in her hair. she retaliates with a pawn, a breath down his neck, scattering over his pulse. when he makes his next move she can feel it - fingers gripping her hip bones, tight enough to bruise. she wishes it could leave a mark. knows it never will.

she's left completely covered in him by the time they finish, not an inch of skin untouched. they've gone at it again and again like a pair of horny teenagers who couldn't get enough of each other. by the time she finally closes the door to her room, alone, body aching, she's already good to go again. her heartbeat stutters in her chest, but this doesn't feel like anything she's familiar with - nothing like the quiet, sweet _crush_ she's had on townes for years. it feels more like she wants to _crush_ him, to press her fingertips to his everything until his bruises purple. she imagines the pressure of his mouth on hers, hot and heady and head-spinning, and it almost has her storming out of the room to find him, but she thinks the better of it. she'll play him again tomorrow. she isn't done with this feeling yet.

the next day she finally beats him in a match that steals the breath from her lungs (she'd tried to reciprocate this time, with deliberately long bats of her eyes and slow taps of her fingernails). she emerges trembling all over from the way he had looked at her, the way he had moved his pieces, the way she could see his mind racing. he might as well have picked her up and taken her to his room. she doesn't like admitting it, but she wouldn't have objected if he had.

they go to the bar after and benny takes his loss in stride, which she appreciates a little too much. they have their longest conversation yet, and beth finds, somewhat unsurprisingly, that benny reeks of sex appeal off the board, too.

she'd never admit outright how attracted she is to him, but when she brushes a stray strand of hair from his face, electricity spreads in her veins, and only then does she finally realize how deep she is in this. at that moment, benny looks at her in that way again, the same way he always does from across the board, somehow seeming arrogant and humbled at the same time. she almost chokes on the tension building betwen them, metallic like blood in her throat, and anticipation crawls across her skin like a swarm of bees - but just then, he steps back.

and when she accepts his invitation to come to new york, as well as his 'no sex' rule, beth wonders how long they can keep up the act, how long she will be able to be on her best behavior - considering they'll be stuck together in his apartment (and it doesn't matter how big it may, because every space feels too small with him) and playing chess all day.

and benny has always played her like a lover.

**Author's Note:**

> i guess maybe i kind of like it?? idk i feel like at least the idea behind this is pretty good. anyway i did enjoy writing this, and i hope you enjoyed reading. pls leave kudos / comment your thoughts! thanks for reading <3


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